


five times Laura Barton opened her door (and one time a door was opened for her)

by twistedingenue



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Farmer Clint, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 03:43:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3921652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedingenue/pseuds/twistedingenue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s been making her life here, where things are quiet and uncomplicated, and uprooting herself would — well, there are things she’d rather not do and risks she’d rather not take anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nick Fury

**Author's Note:**

> I have a thing about underdeveloped female characters. I like to develop them. 
> 
> Thank you to puffabilly for sparking a backstory and bluroux for beta work.

“Baby-girl,” Clint says. Clint’s been out of uniform for what seems like a minute, a wonderful minute where Laura thinks she finally might be able to get him to settle down and slow down. But it seems like all he wants to do is lace up his boots again, and this time, shoot his damn bow rather than a rifle. “I need you with me on this.”

It’s Laura that’s bought the land and the farmhouse, after hours with Clint on the phone, quiet talks and promises of what they can do with it. A place that’s quiet after years of war, after years of being asked to do things no person should have to do. Things that cause Clint to come back to her with haunted eyes and nothing to say and the things that keep her awake at night.

They’ve waited to get married. Clint’s insisted that it isn’t fair to Laura to be yoked to him before they have a chance to be in each others pockets. It’s a practical assumption, though Laura didn’t want to wait. She wanted Clint to have some surety in his storm, but she didn’t need a ring to have his strength and support.

But now she’s wondering if all that talk was really just Clint hiding far deeper commitment issues than she knew about, because Clint wants to sign up again.

“I’ll listen,” Laura says and extends her hand out, “I’m Laura Wolanski.”

“Nick Fury,” The man sitting at her kitchen table, sipping coffee that Clint brewed up — so it’s terrible— introduces himself. Laura notices the eyepatch and her mind already worries at just what Clint has gotten himself into this time. Her boyfriend has a penchant for trouble, “You’re the fiancee?”

“Ahh!” Clint says, his eyes widening, “Not yet, sir. Thanks for ruining the surprise.” Laura lifts her head up, pinning him with a glance. Clint’s face reveals everything, his hands dart to his jacket pocket.

“If you didn’t want her to find out ahead of time, you should have kept it to yourself, Barton. That’s something we’ll have to work on.”

Laura decides to suspend her judgement of whatever Nick Fury wants until after he’s finished. She’s not going anywhere. But what Fury describes is dangerous work. Terrifying, really. And engaging. By the time he’s finished, Laura is ready to sign up too. Oh, she knows it’s sanitized for her benefit, it can’t be as clean-cut and heroic as he describes, she has a healthy dose of skepticism in her and her inner voice is telling her to breathe slowly and think things through.

“I’d have to commit to the Academy, and then a three year contract.” Clint says quietly, “But this time, I don’t want to do it without you. It’s not safer than the army. Not by a longshot but —“

“You can’t focus without being part of something bigger,” Laura finishes for him, “It’s a character flaw of yours. Got to be the good guy, willing to save the world when no one else can.”

“Miss Wolanski, I am more than aware of the—“ Fury pauses, and the silence sinks into her heart like a knife ready to be twisted, “circumstances of your past and that government involvement would not be appreciated. If he accepts my offer, your relationship will be a private matter. You won’t appear on any paperwork within SHIELD, and we will work to make sure you are protected from any prying eyes. Your existence will be need to know information only.”

“That’ll put a strain on Thanksgiving dinner,” Laura answers, “What if I wanted to have his co-workers over?”

“Then I suppose that you’ll just have to put up with me.” Fury drawls and she likes him, can just picture him volunteering to cut the turkey next November.

“And if I said I can’t do that?”

“I’ll walk away,” Clint says quietly, “I can always find something else to do.” The thing unsaid is that she can’t. She’s been making her life here, where things are quiet and uncomplicated, and uprooting herself would — well, there are things she’d rather not do and risks she’d rather not take anymore. Laura’s made her life into stability now and Clint is part of that. And he would choke on the vine if he couldn’t go out and be impossibly daring and relentlessly sacrificing.

“You might as well stay for dinner. Clint, you wanna go start the barbecue. I have enough pork chops for all three of us. I think we have a lot of discussion ahead of us. Clint tends to miss the fine print in contracts, so you bet I want to look that over too.”


	2. Phil Coulson

When Clint tells her he finally figured out who is best man will be, Laura is relieved. The engagement happens in tentative steps. Laura’s discovered her own hesitance in the solid substance of marriage. How will everything hold together, where will the cracks develop in time, and when will they admit that rings and decrees won’t change a thing about their relationship?

“Didn’t you say he was your handler?” Laura asks over the phone. She has a maid of honor, but getting her to leave Texas has it’s own brand of hardships, and ‘By the way; there’s going to me a lot of law enforcement’ is one of them. “The one you said was so straight-laced his cock probably point due north?”

Clint takes in a quick breath and Laura can hear the sounds of muffled laughter in the background, “Clint! Do you have me on speakerphone?” she practically growls into her phone.

“I hit the wrong button, I don’t know how this phone works, I could never get the hang of — never mind, look, you mind him coming over for dinner?”

“Yeah we can do that,” Laura shuffles through bills on the kitchen table, mentally slotting them into categories of when to pay them based on their respective paychecks, “When’s your next leave?”

“Open the door and find out,” Clint is an asshole and unable to keep the grin from coloring his voice. It’s in the creak and fry of the ends of his words, his mouth so wide that he can’t control himself.

She opens the door and yes, there’s Clint, but in front of him is a regulation G-Man, and Laura’s heart skips twice, and she’s gripping the door to keep herself from bowling the stranger over and making a run for it. SHIELD was a bad idea, she should never have trusted —

“I’m sorry, Clint thought the surprise would be a good idea,” the stranger says and he coughs delicately. Clint turns a little red around his neck beside him, the gulf between best intentions and Laura’s fight or flight instinct clear in the way her chest rises and falls, quick and shallow. 

“This is Phil Coulson, sweetheart,” Clint tells her, and urges her fingers off the door. He pleads with his eyes to trust him, and Laura steps aside to let them in. Phil is through the door, and Clint engulfs Laura in a tight hug, all-encompassing. When Clint Barton loves you, when he can admit it, that love pours right through him. He whispers in her ear, “We can trust him.”

Laura relaxes slightly, hoping it doesn’t show too much in body. Clint doesn’t always have the best judgement, she’ll reserve all of her trust for at least a few more sentences. “It’s nice to meet you Phil. How long are you here for,” she finds Clint’s hand, holds on tight, leads them towards the kitchen. The living room is a mess, she’s redecorating.

“Week. Phil said he’d help me get the basement done up a little better. Put up drywall, lay down some laminate.” Clint says, and his smile is so infectious and the way he looks at her and grips her hand —oh, it’s enough to remember why she came to Iowa with him.

Coulson starts to say, “If I’m putting you out —“ but Laura won’t hear the end of that sentence. Clint trusts him. Laura has a promise from Fury about her privacy. A week to figure out how much of that promise will actually be upheld is a good thing.

She can still run if she has to, but she really doesn’t want too.

“Don’t you worry. Clint, show him up to the guest room and put on some clean sheets. I’ve got to make up another plate for dinner. 

And she makes a damn good meal. She was going to cook up a pork roast for the week anyways, just chop up and add a few more carrots and onions, another big potato, and it’s a serviceable Sunday dinner. The conversation is good, Coulson has a sly sense of humor, which continually sets Clint off in uproarious laughter. But Phil also seems reserved and she knows when she’s being watched. 

A storm rolls in after dinner, and she heads out on the porch to watch lightning fill the sky. She loves watching the horizon go on forever, the whole world before her. The door closes and the floorboards creak, another project that Clint swears he’ll get to soon, but the footsteps aren’t familiar.

“Care if I join you?” Phil asks. He’s changed out of the suit, but nothing about his khakis is relaxed, hasn’t even rolled his shirtsleeves up. “I always liked storms.”

Laura shrugs, he might not be lying about that, “It’s a good one, bulk of the storms to the north,” she points out, “So we get the show without the potential flooding.”

“You have a very nice house, Laura,” Phil says, “Is it a family place?”

There’s a loaded question, “Not at all, I bought it a few years ago, while Clint was still in the army.”

“Impressive,” Phil says, “The land must have been a fortune,” he pauses, “You must have gotten in at a good time. It’s what, ten acres?”

“Twelve.” She answers, waiting for whatever it is that Phil really wants to get out of her in this conversation, but that doesn’t mean she can’t play along a little, “What do you do at SHIELD? Clint says you are his handler?”

“I — do a great many things. Intelligence, logistics.” He smiles blandly at her, “Enforcement.”

“Well, those are all in the name of your organization,” Laura responds, just as bland.

“Mostly though, I work in developing talent. Bringing just the right people together, finding the skills people never knew they had, finding motivations. That sort of thing.”

“You find anything that works for Clint yet?” Laura asks, wishing she had grabbed a beer before she came out here.

“I’m still trying to find the right team for him. He can be quite prickly, finds it hard to work with people who don’t understand him. I’ll figure it out eventually. But his motivations are clear, this motivates him. Laura, he took months at the academy to tell me about you. And I had been briefed on his entanglements from Fury. Your well-being is his motivation.” And Phil himself changes, he’s finally started to shed his clipped, precise words and slides into the neighborhood of homey. 

Laura knew all this, but it’s different coming from someone who she doesn’t know, it’s comforting. “Seems to me, if you were briefed on his entanglements, you should have seen that one coming.”

“Maybe I should have. You have an interesting file, Laura. I’m glad Clint met you.”

Because it would be terrible if he hadn’t, Laura thinks, “I’m glad he did too.” It would have been horrible to be on the other side of Phil Coulson and the talent he creates. The storm is long, and like the sky and their silence, it goes on to fill the space between them.


	3. Maria Hill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a warning, this chapter deals with the aftermath of a miscarriage.

It’s the dead of night, and Laura wakes to the curious sound of someone trying to lock pick her front door. Burglars around here tend towards throwing bricks and grabbing what they can before the owner wakes up. 

Laura throws on her robe, ties it tight over her nightshirt and stomps heavily down the creaking stairs. If she complains about the stairs, though, it would mean Clint would try to fix them, and she really can’t handle that right now. 

Before she opens the door, she unlocks the hidden compartment on the curio cabinet, the one Nick presented her with last Christmas, where Clint has carefully stored Laura’s favorite gun. Just to be safe.

She opens the door to a kneeling woman, big pale blue eyes and brown hair pulled back tightly. Even from the crouch she’s in, she looks formidable, even when she’s taken aback, “Shit, I didn’t know someone was already here. You….you know Hawkeye?” Laura nods. “He told me I’d be safe here. This is a safe house right? I’m not — I’m not committing a felony here right?”

Laura nods again and sighs, “You got a name?”

“Hill. Maria Hill.”

“You might as well come in, then.” Laura’s thankful that she always keeps a room up for visitors, and that she’s been able to mostly keep the place clean while still being tied, one end or another, to the bathroom. She’d been trying not to take on too many assignments since the start, and she’s not ready to ramp back up yet. But for what work she does have, well, the laptop works just fine in the bathroom as it does in the rest of the house

Clint’s mentioned Hill a few times, that he likes her steadiness and her loyalty. And she’s a hard-ass who tows enough of the line to let her be underhanded. “I won’t ask what sort of trouble you are in, so long as it doesn’t come to visit too. I’m Laura.”

Maria looks around, probably judging the wood paneling that Clint swears he’ll get to next time. Laura’s tempted to just find crisp white paint and some professionals who take money in exchange for their labor, rather than wait for Clint to have time. “This place isn’t on any of the SHIELD lists.”

“No, it’s not. You got any calls you need to make, you use that phone.” She points down the hall, deftly relocking the hidden compartment, “Bedroom’s to the right, you get some sleep, and I’ll have breakfast on in the morning.” 

Laura sleeps lightly. Hill’s not the first agent to crash a night or two. SHIELD is strangely lacking in midwestern safe houses outside of Chicago. But Hill’s the first person who’s stumbled in who is close to knowing about her. Give her another level of clearance or more personal contact, Clint will start gushing to her eventually. It makes her nervous, but it doesn’t stop her from being hospitable.

But she also sleeps lightly because her body hasn’t caught up with itself and she gives up on sleeping in when it hits seven and just tries to find something that won’t nauseate her to make for breakfast.

“Geez, you look like shit,” Maria walks into the kitchen, following the smell of bacon, and bites her lips, “Shit sorry.”

Laura thinks of herself in the mirror, her hair barely brushed, her eyes all cried out for a bit, and how she looks as though she’s trapped in the haunted house of her body. “No, I look like shit.” Laura tries to smile, but it’s hard and it feels fake. “It’s been a rough few days.” She drops her hands against her thighs with an audible slap. “What sort of strange doings brings SHIELD to Iowa? Aliens get into the corn?” Soybean mobsters?”

Maria doesn’t even bother with the side-eye, Laura gets the full don’t even bother shit eating grin, “The biodiesel mafia,” she answers. Laura pours coffee for both of them and Maria inhales the scent first as it cools, “It’s more that this was on the way from who I was running from.”

“Well, you can stay as long —“ Laura hears the roar of overpowered engines and crunching gravel under tires. “There’s a safe room in the basement. There’s a secure line, you may want to call your backup.” Maria stares at Laura and Laura stares back, “Go, I’ve got this.” Maria goes.

The cars leave their engines running, and Laura heads round to the front door, unlocking the cabinet again, hiding the gun in an inside pocket of her robe. She looks in the hall mirror and dishevles herself a little more, then opens the door.

The men outside are imposing, impeccably dressed for an early morning. Laura slips into their expectations, housewife on the prairie and the unclassy redneck. “What can I do you for, fellas?” Her voices turns itchy and raw, “This is private property if yer from the government.”

“No trouble ma’am,” the man taking the lead is taller than the rest, a beansprout with a bushier beard than Laura would have expected. He’s the only one not clean-shaven, “We’re not from the city.”

“Nah, you ain’t. City folks don’t look like you. I already got a fancy vacuum and y’all don’t look like no Brownies, so whatever you’re selling you can go to the Shepherds a few miles over and try with them. They don’t mind visitors.” This would sell better if she had her hair in curlers rather than in a slippery, frizzy bun, but for a moment’s notice, it’s good. Her heart pounds in exhilaration, in the quick decision of setting up a winning hand.

“Can I ask just one quick question?”

Laura gives him a hard stare, “You get one. And one answer. And then you go turn around and go back into your car. Come back at a civilized hour and you might get another chance. I haven’t had my coffee yet.”

“You got any company inside?” He says it almost like a leer, challenging her into giving up more than what she’s willing to give.

Laura feels the weight of her gun. She wouldn’t make it. She’d be full of holes after one shot. So she scoffs instead, “Would I look like this if I did? You put your face on when you have visitors that you want around.” Laura turns to go back inside. A wave of nausea and another round of cramps causes her to stop and grip the door.

The man, acting like he cares, says “You alright there. Need us to come inside and help?” like that’s a tactic that has ever worked, “Call an ambulance?”

“Nothing you can do, doc already knows.” She slams the door shut. She can hear them kick the gravel around outside, talking on their cellphones. Laura doesn’t quite drop her act, just holds her legs together, presses her lips until they are white to wait out the pain. 

The cars leave. She puts the gun back, but leaves it unlocked and calls Maria back upstairs. Predictably, Maria wasn’t in the basement, because Laura has learned that given an opportune moment SHIELD agents have more guts than sense. 

“Please tell me you weren’t standing in front of a window?” Laura sighs, knowing an argument she is going to lose from the sheer stubborn willpower of her opponent.

Hill rolls her eyes so far her head moves with it, “That was some grade A talking there, hausfrau. Acting classes when you were a kid?”

“Sure, if you call scheming people out of their wallets acting,” Laura says glibly, “My dad called it family bonding.

“I called for extraction, they should be here in an hour. We’re going to leave you with some security. Discreetly, of course, for the next couple of days, just in case those gentlemen come back.” Maria hangs back, not blocking her way when she notices the pain that Laura is holding back.

Laura nods and holds her breath until she can get to the bathroom, exhaling the moment she gets to the toilet, and doesn’t let herself think until she washes her hands and walks back out.

Hill is looking at the photographs of her and Clint, their wedding. Phil Coulson in the purple tie that Clint picked out, grinning like a proud brother. Hill taps the glass, “Did you…did you need to pass along any messages?” 

Laura opens her mouth, but no words come out, and she rubs the back of her neck, shaking her head no, “It can wait until he’s home.” 

 

Maria gives her the grace to pretend not to watch her cry.


	4. Natasha Romanov

“What the hell are you thinking, bringing her here?” Laura hisses the moment she closes the door to their bedroom. She’s careful not to slam it; Lila’s asleep and Laura really can’t deal with a ten-month old right now on top of the redhead washing up in the guest bathroom.

“I couldn’t just leave her at SHIELD, Laura.” Clint has no volume control, none at all, and Laura braces herself for the wail, but none comes. Laura presses a finger to her lips and Clint backs down and darts his eyes, “She doesn’t really trust anyone right now, but she’s coming close to trusting me. If I left her in DC, she…might run.”

Laura tries to see what Clint sees in Natasha. She doesn’t skitter or shake, she holds herself with an unchangeable calm. There’s little hint of the feral animal that Clint keeps insisting is there, except maybe Natasha holds herself so still because she’s waiting for something, some direction. Papa always told her to sit and wait until she was needed, and that was a game at first until she learned how high the stakes were.

“She’s a spy and an assassin,” Laura bites her lip, “She’s a Black Widow, even I've heard of them. And you want her in the same house as your daughter?” It sounds so cliche, but dammit, Laura works hard to keep this life separate from the one she lived before. And the steps they’ve taken so she can stay safe? She has to trust in them, she has to. The ghost has been given up and she can’t go back.

Clint laughs and takes her by the cheeks and places a smacking kiss to her lips, “Baby-girl so am I, and you let me stay.”

“Okay, yes, that was a rather dumb thing to say,” she admits, “But Clint, you have to see how this blurs the lines for me.”

“I know,” Clint says quietly.

“And how much I’m scared right now.”

“I know,” he repeats, shoving his hands into his pockets.

Laura looks away, “And you didn’t ask.”

“Laura, I know,” Clint steps closer again, “I kinda had to spirit her away. Fury and Coulson know, but — you didn’t see her a week ago when they were questioning her. She’s not adapting well, and she needs someplace a little less demanding than a room full of experts picking her apart to see how she ticks. Natasha needs to figure out a little space that’s all hers. Laura, please, let her stay.”

Clint, not all that long ago really, held out his hand for her. With his big heart, he can’t help but to do it again. Laura thinks of the woman again — she looks smart, and daring, but strung so tight, like a bowstring pulled back as far as it can go. If she’s let loose without aim, Natasha will stumble with the power, instead of flying fast and true. All Clint’s trying to do is give Natasha the same thing he gave Laura.

“Okay,” Laura says, “I’m not a hypocrite.” And on cue, Lila starts crying when the water shuts off. Clint kisses her soundly, and tells her he’s got this and heads to the nursery to see his little girl.

Natasha ends up being a frightfully quiet houseguest. She walks out with Clint whenever he goes to walk the fence line and repair holes. One of these days, he says, they’ll start growing things, or maybe return the land into prairie, but for now he mows and he repairs the fence. Laura sets an extra plate at meals and Natasha thanks her for each one. It’s hard not to like someone so unfailingly polite, and Laura hadn’t realized how young the woman is. Or appears to be. Laura has a hard time imagining that the haunted look Natasha carries with her like a shroud could belong to any other young woman.

Natasha wears that shroud likes it was painstakingly stitched for her, and can’t decide if its something to be proud of or if it’s a horror story she can’t shake. And Laura wonders how she herself looked the day she met Clint. Nothing like that, and yet Clint had wanted her.

So Laura tries to draw Natasha into conversation, drawing on years of experience with less than illustrious criminals (and now mothers at the park who smile and spit with the same mouth.) Natasha is tough to crack and maybe she’s not ready to be cracked.

The thing is, when you’ve worked for someone else for something so dirty that you have to scrape the thought of you out of your skin in order to survive, when you are free you have to figure out how to fill yourself back up again. The woman can fill herself up with silence all she wants, harden the skin she has, and someday when she’s ready, Natasha can set her heart beating again.

Lila’s down for her nap and Clint’s out working in the barn and Laura takes the opportunity to get twenty uninterrupted minutes to take a shower. Lila is an active little girl, and Laura is in no way ready for things like walking and God forbid, talking. Her babble is precious and occasionally incessant, verging towards words and she’s going to end up just like her father, with a smart mouth and charming smile. She’s working conditioner through her hair when Lila starts crying and Laura waits just to see if she stops on her own.

And she does, and Laura gets to finish her shower, wrap herself up in her robe and dry off without much concern. Clean clothes, even if they won’t stay clean for very long, feel like an accomplishment these days. She even has extra time and she could get some cleaning done, or she could sit on the couch and read until Lila wakes up or Clint comes back in. It’s an excellent idea, one she can only contemplate when Clint is home with her.

It’s the singing that she doesn’t understand. There’s singing but the rest of the house is quiet, nothing else stirs. Not even a floorboard creaking with age. It’s far too quiet except for the singing in a language she doesn’t understand. Laura acts on instinct, walking without audible footfalls through her house to the nursery.

Natasha sits in the rocking chair, the one Clint insisted on — Clint has ideas of what home should look like, an idealized picture he continually strives for — and holds Lila. Her girl has a fistful of red hair, and watches Natasha with rapt attention. It’s a lullaby, but not a sweet one. Most lullabies are pretty terrifying when you listen to them anyways, and the important thing is that there are words. But it’s not like Lila is going to get confused by a foreign language every so often.

She doesn’t look at ease, but she doesn’t hold Lila with trepidation or uncertainty either. But it is a practiced motion. As if she never held a doll as a child and had learned as an adult.

“I’m sorry, she was crying and I thought you could use the time alone.” Natasha says, not looking up to Laura, transfixed by Lila as much as Lila is with her.

“Thank you, that was very kind of you.” Natasha shrugs, bending her head and lifting her shoulder together with the barest hint of a smile, “She likes you.”

“It’s the hair. Children have always been attracted to it. Men too, but in a very different way.” Natasha finally looks at Laura, “I prefer the children.”

Laura leans against the wall, “How are you doing Natasha?” She doesn’t consider that she’ll ever get an honest answer, this is more conversation than they’ve strung together since she arrived.

“How did you do it?” Natasha asks instead of answering the question, “You — you confuse me. You were not always clean, yes? How did you turn it all into this?” Natasha is careful with Lila, so very careful not to disturb her, to let her tug and play with Natasha’s hair.

“When I was young, my family told me there was not a deserving person in the world. That all anyone does is struggle, and we had to make our fortune ourselves and it didn’t matter that we stepped on people’s backs to do so. Sometimes, I even still believe this — life is a struggle, but I’ve learned that every person is deserving if they can look back at what they have done and feel remorse for the sorrow and pain they’ve caused.” Laura walks over to Natasha and Lila and sits on the floor in front of them, “I took an outstretched hand and he gave me the strength to find remorse and how to live with it.”

“Is this a habit of your husband? Does he often pluck criminals off the street and put them on the path to righteousness?” Natasha barely breaks an expression, but her eyes just barely arc in a roll.

“No, but I think it makes him reckless. Man like that needs someone to anchor him and keep him out of too much trouble.” But this isn’t about Clint, and Natasha is just trying to jerk the conversation to something less difficult. But she needs to know, “But he does have good instincts about people — he can see a good heart when it’s trapped, so let me offer this to you. You need a home, and I happen to have a very nice one. You always have a place here.”

“I think you might be a little reckless too,” Natasha says after a few moments.

“Imagine how bad Lila is going to be,” Laura smiles. Natasha bops Lila on the nose, and the girl giggles and grins. Laura claps her hands on her thighs and stands up, “When you’ve had your fill of baby, just put her back down to nap. Maybe we’ll get lucky and daddy will come back in before she wakes up and we can sit back with some wine tonight.”

She’s nearly out the door before she hears Natasha say, “Thank you,” so soft but sure, that Laura knows she’s meant to hear it.


	5. Wanda Maximoff

It’s really come to a point that if Clint brought home a line of ducklings, Laura wouldn’t be surprised. Vulnerable people just imprint on Clint, and Laura loves her husband, but really, most of these people need better role models.

But after the dust settles after Sokovia, and Nathaniel is born and she’s settling into the wondrous grind of a newborn child, Clint settles next to her. He tucks his head on her shoulder, wraps his arms around her waist. She’s having a little more trouble with the baby weight this time around, and she’s getting ready to consider that part of the expense of having three children.

“Ok, so I want to invite another emotionally distraught mostly-adult woman to stay with us,” Clint says hurriedly, breaking the silence of their mid-day snuggling.

Laura rolls her eyes so hard, “Want to invite or she’s already on her way or is standing at the front door?”

“I can learn,” Clint answers with mock hurt and indignation, “I brought it up with Steve. Wanda —“

She cuts him off, because the answer is yes. Wanda should come and meet Nathaniel Pietro. Wanda isn’t really a duckling, then, because Clint is the one that feels a debt. Clint is the one that got to come home to his family, and he’s since decided that Wanda is now part of it. 

She can feel the relief rolling off Clint as she snuggles into his loose embrace. It’s a few minutes peace at least, before Nate inevitably experiences something new and begins to cry.

Wanda, for her part, arrives looking drawn out, her eyes in deep hollows. “Thank you for inviting me to your home,” she says with a thick but understandable accent. Lila’s going to love that, she’s turned into a little mimic. The young woman looks at Laura and her eyes widen briefly before she smiles. Clint warned Laura that Wanda can’t always control her powers, particularly the telepathy and being able to see motivations. Laura has never kept her past too deep, it’s part and parcel of her life.

And some skills do come in handy. PTA and Mommy meetings are a lot more fun when you think of them as a very long con. So Laura smiles back at Wanda, pressing a finger to her lips, and Wanda does the same. They will get along just fine.

Natasha took awhile to warm up to the children. She had just really accepted Lila when Cooper had come home — Laura will always think kindly on her friend that offered to take in Cooper for a week-long summer stay — and had to start the process all over again. But Wanda loves the children, loves playing with them and entertaining them.

“Training is difficult,” Wanda says to Laura at sunset on a Wednesday night. Nathaniel is sleeping but Lila and Cooper are catching lightning bugs with Clint. “Where we were before, they wanted only results and it did not matter how we got them. All things would come together for good use and we were special. Now — it matters how we,” Wanda gets lost in her sentence, “How I use my powers matters now. It’s difficult to reorient, but it’s good.”

The kids shout and run about, and Clint does the same with them. They probably frighten off more of the bugs than they catch, but none of them care too much about it. It’s the time they spend doing something together that matters. Clint’s gone so much, and even though Clint’s long, immersive mission days are mostly over, there are enough weeks where he’s gone long enough for worry to take hold.

Wanda can’t stop saying we, can barely conceive of this strange new world where there isn’t Pietro, a fixed mark and a weight at her side. They are an us, severed into broken pieces. Pietro belongs to then, Wanda has to live in a now, and even if she throws herself into the work at hand — Wanda has a part of her entire self missing.

Laura must be thinking too loudly, because Wanda replies to the thoughts running through Laura’s mind, “Severed yes, but he’s not gone. My brother is always a part of me. Memories are a body all of their own. We have been together from the spark of life. Death cannot stop that.”

What exactly do you say to that?

Laura had a life without Clint, without her children. It wasn’t what she really wanted, but it’s what she’d grown up with, helping her father — her aunts and uncles too. She was good at slipping into roles and convincing other people of them. But her first con as an adult was on herself, and her last one involved a military grunt on leave who saw through her smokescreen. Laura knows her life without Clint, she can imagine carrying on without him. What she can’t imagine is being bereft of his influence.

Laura decides on, “I’m sorry for your loss,” and hopes it is enough.

“I am too,” Wanda replies. She watches the kids play and smiles, and moves her hands. The backyard fills with the lights of a hundred or more of the fireflies. From sky to grass, the world is alight by their glow, blinking in and out.

“You can do that?” Laura says in bewilderment. When Clint had described her powers, it was nothing like this. The kids go wild, Clint grins like a maniac at Wanda and pulls Cooper down to the grass with him.

“I pulled all strings of possibility and manifested them to this spot. I’ll pull them back before they eat your garden.” Wanda matches Clint’s smile with one of her own, a moment of unrestrained joy shared by people that understand family as the center of their lives. But grief returns to her almost as quickly, a persistent ache that settles around her eyes.

“That’s pretty cool,” Laura replies and steps a little closer to Wanda. There’s enough family and comfort for anyone that needs it, and Wanda can take as much as she needs. 

But Wanda steps away off the porch and goes to join Clint and the kids. Wisps of red sometimes wind their way around her fingertips, guiding the lightning bugs in the air to and fro. Wanda has the comfort of family, even if it’s someone else’s, for her to alleviate some of her grief.


	6. Clint Barton

“Lady,” Laura is bent over her book when someone taps her on her shoulder and sits down next to her at the bus stop. The man pokes her again, “Lady, look. I’d just like my wallet back.”

Laura most certainly does not freeze, it’s not the first time someone has accused her of stealing their wallet or watch. Most of the time, though, she didn’t do it. Whoever in her family she was working with at the time was responsible for the pickpocketing, so Laura could — in her own way— maintain her composure and concentrate on acting hurt that someone would dare accuse her of such a thing. Sometimes, there was even crying.

But this time, she’s truly lying when she covers her eyes and her shakes her head, confused, and says “Excuse me?”

“My wallet. You picked it out of my coat about twenty minutes ago when you ran into me on the street. Not a bad grab, really. I didn’t notice it for a few minutes. I suppose that’s what I get for not keeping it in an interior pocket.” 

Right, so maybe she should just bring out the tears now. Her lips tremble and she darts her eyes so that she can blink rapidly to bring them on, “I can’t believe you would accuse me of that. I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

The man just holds out his hand. Laura takes a good look at him to try to figure out what to do next. He’s military — Army, by the uniform, and he’s got a face that he really needs to grow into. It’s not quite a baby-face, there’s not that softness to his features needed for that, it’s just that he needs to fill the gravity of the angles.

What he does have is some pretty impressive biceps and a bored, expectant expression. Laura turns away from him, trying to gather up what few things she has. Fucking cousin ran off with pretty much everything. Laura’s burned for a little while — not willing to go along with a plan that was sure as shit going to escalate into the type of thing you could go away for life for. 

It’s one thing to spend a little time in a cell. It’s another to be there forever. That is not a risk she’s willing to take. 

“That’d be almost convincing if it weren’t terribly cliche. Look, I’m not going to turn you in or anything. Picking pockets is something I’ve done myself to survive,” the man says just as she lifts herself off the bench ,”And sometimes because it was fun.” He finishes with a smile and Laura finds herself believing him.

She sits back down and turns to the side so that he can’t see that she’s got a small collection going when she opens her bag, “What’s your name?”

“Clint Barton. It’s the purple one with velcro.”

Laura looks in her bag, and yeah, it’s right there. She opens it up; military id, an old picture of two young boys, beat-up tickets to a circus. No credit card, twenty bucks in cash.

“Yeah girlie, that one,” Clint says, still with that smile. It’s a nice smile, “You can keep the cash if you really need it.”

“This is like a kids wallet,” Laura says, handing it back to him.

“Well, I got it when I was a kid. Haven’t need to replace it yet. What’s your name?”

She considers lying, but she’s doesn’t have a good reason to; her name is common enough. “Laura.”

“Nice name. Picking pockets isn’t your thing, is it?” He narrows his eyes, “It’s not shooting things, is it? Because that’s my thing, and I get a little possessive about it. They’re sending me to the sniper school, maybe even special ops. It’d be terrible if it were your thing.”

Laura laughs, she can’t believe this guy. She picks his pocket and he wants to chat her up, “Sniper school, huh?” But there is something about him that makes her not want to walk away right now. Her feet hurt. She’s been walking all day. Maybe she can get something out of this if she lays on the charm.

“Apparently, I’m supposed to be aiming the part that goes boom, who knew.” Clint says, “You, I think you were the distraction, con jobs. Long ones maybe? Never had time for those, and I didn’t like doing them. My brother was real good at them though. Could sell ice to an eskimo for double the price.”

“Family business to start, was trying to do some bigger jobs with my cousin but…” she answers and then wrinkles her nose, “God, look at you, why do you care? If this is some elaborate set-up to get me to fuck you I don’t do that --”

“Because you don’t sit on a park bench with half a dozen wallets if you actually cared about what happens next. You go out and spend as much as you can on the credit cards before the card gets shut down and you get the hell out of the city,” His smile is crooked and knowing, and Laura gets a hint that while he needs to grow into his face, he’s plenty grown and dangerous. “You aren’t running. So maybe you are having a come to Jesus moment. What was your last job?”

“The last job I did, or the job I walked away from?” Laura turns closer to him, steeling herself for the lecture. But a lecture doesn’t come, just an expectant look and willful expression, daring her to answer, “Cousin got a few leads with counterfeiters, bigger than anything we’ve ever done. But — I don’t like their reputation.” she says simply, because the truth is, they’d killed before. Apparently, she found her line when it came to criminal activity. 

She’ll lie, cheat, and steal. Violence though? That’s harder to walk away from. People have insurance for their things; life insurance doesn’t bring a person back.

“Sounds like something my brother would do too. Turned out, I’m not suited for cheating good people.” Clint says quietly, “I joined up to get out of a bad place. You got someplace to go?”

Laura stiffens, “I told you, I’m not —“

“Shit now, I’m bad at this. Look, this is me trying pay it forward. I got help getting out, I can see what that looks like on someone else. You don’t want to do this anymore, do you?”

Laura looks around herself and settles her gaze on her knees. She know of at least three active warrants out for her arrest. Minor things, really, but they got Capone on tax evasion. Her family has schemes and connections that make her stomach twist, and they increasingly want her help in them. She lifts her eyes up to Clint’s own and admits, “No, I don’t. But I don’t know what else to do.”

“Well, I don’t know about forever, but I got a hotel room right now while I’m on leave, and a few phone calls I can make. You wanted in Iowa?”

Laura’s family mostly stuck to the south, Texas to Georgia, she shakes her head no.

“I still have a few friends out there, owe me a favor or two. Somewhere to go, at least until you get things a little more straightened out.” Clint seems painfully earnest about this, but most of all honest. She wants to say yes, but this is how women get kidnapped and trafficked. “No funny business, I swear. I’m just opening a door, you’ve got to walk though.”

But what does she have to lose? There’s always ways to get in touch with her family, there’s money that she has stashed that she just needs to be able to access. And Clint — Laura thinks she’s a decent judge of character, knows the difference between lying and charming and honesty, and Clint’s leaning so hard on honesty and heart.

“Okay.” Laura says. Her world is full of trouble, but someplace a little more quiet might do her some good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading. I'd like to thank puffabilly for giving me a backstory and letting me run with it and BluRoux for her excellent betaing.
> 
> If you enjoyed this work or you've decided I'm pretty cool, you can follow me on [ tumblr](http://twistedingenue.tumblr.com)


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